Female paramedic tells anecdote for IWD, gets abused on Twitter for being transphobic. Helen Lewis and Hadley Freeman wade in 🙌

[HeyRoly]

twitter.com/xliserx/status/971809699539505152?s=21

^So I read this Twitter thread today, started by a paramedic called Lisa, and noticed it was SO quickly derailed by screams of "whataboutery", in this case "what about trans women?" (more about whataboutery here from this excellent blog that I discovered in this sub and immediately bookmarked: victimfocus.wordpress.com/2018/01/03/stop-asking-me-what-about-men/ ) to the extent that the original point of the tweet - female paramedic abused by man she'd arrived to rescue - was completely lost. I read it this morning and couldn't believe that a woman making a flippant joke about not having a Y chromosome and having breasts turned into a flaming re. "bio essentialism". Lisa also tweeted "Remember, a woman gave birth to you once" and immediately gets schooled on "not all people who give birth identify as women" and "cisgender narratives are so dominant!" (gosh, I wonder why?)

Lisa tweets later on to say:

Tonight I learned why women don’t share their experiences. The world is terrible. People are terrible. My phone is blowing up with hatred like I’ve never seen in my whole life. Shame on you. I’m a real person. You send your mean @‘s into the void, forgetting exactly that.

Helen Lewis retweets Lisa and says:

Let’s all be honest about what’s happening in cases like this. Gender theory is just being used as an excuse to “correct” women constantly. Men don’t get this when they talk casually and colloquially about being a man

Frankly, it’s a testament to women’s socialisation to be nice and sensitive to other’s feelings that this doesn’t get pointed out more. No one has bombarded @arobertwebb with demands that he talk about the small percentage of men who have vaginas

twitter.com/helenlewis/status/972035005986811904?s=21

Hadley Freeman retweets Helen Lewis and adds:

When I wrote about my miscarriage last year I got multiple tweets and emails telling me I was being transphobic for writing about the chaos of female biology. Do men who write about, say, prostate cancer receive similar? I’m guessing the answer is no.

twitter.com/hadleyfreeman/status/972049768141729792?s=21

I would quite like to buy all of these women a fucking drink.

Apologies for any incoherent writing. It took me ages to compile all those links

well done roly

Fucking hell.

(Sorry am not more articulate.)

I nearly posted about this! Poor Lisa. She sounds great. If there is any doubt that a) misogyny is alive and kicking and b) the trans movement plays into this I suggest people look at her Twitter feed. She told a great story and other women were sharing in solidarity, she even fucking posted a "solidarity with trans sisters on women's day" post earlier and she gets pasted for mentioning her own chromosomes and boobs.
Hope she is reading this. for Lisa

Listened to JJ's link last night and read Venice's transcript... and then you see this shit.

Would the police be interested? I guess not but should they be?

It's a million X more of a hate crime than anything JJ and Venice said.

The idea that they're arguing about the biological requirements about what makes a woman is especially galling since the poor woman is a medical professional and has studied anatomy and physiology to qualify for what she does.

Shit like this makes me so angry.

Holy fuck.

Thanks for summarising.

It feels like people have become insane these last few months! All brainwashed into this ludicrous trans crap!

Wow!

Well done Helen and Hadley x

What the fuck is wrong with people? Do they stop and actually look at what they are doing in the name of being "progresssive"?? How little self awareness must a person have, to reply to that paramedic (and other women)telling that story, with such utter bullshit whataboutery, and still think they occupy the moral high ground?

Nice to see Robert Webb on Helen Lewis’s thread

You can't talk about inequality and political/ideological interference in women's health care.

Who would have thought....

I said it on another thread today.

Can you think of men's health care issues where political / ideological belief affect the way men are treated or how research is done (and what conclusions that research comes to)?

There are examples but few and fair between. Whilst women seek to remove this from healthcare care and research trans activists seek to introduce it.

Once it starts to take hold and be accepted, then it has ethical implications throughout healthcare which leave the many at the mercy of the few.

If the NHS and universal equal access to healthcare is the baby of the labour party, theres a glaring problem here.

Momentum become the useful idiots to the capitalist neo-liberals they purport to hate so much.

it is because of stuff like this that i might have gone into some biological detail in my letter cancelling my labour party membership

Thanks for this. Shocking.

Techy Q - I'd like to subscribe to that blog in the OP, but can't see how to? Would like to support it, but also I want to read it.

Helen Lewis is always a star.

Well done roly

lisa doubt you are on here but and if you see this

TRA logic is potent fuel for misogynists.
And people wonder why it has caught on so rapidly.

But I love that Hadley is properly out. She's been flirting with it for a while.

Welcome to the sunshine on the mountainous peaks of the high Terf country Hadley. Let me pour you a

Thank you for sharing.

What's really striking about this is that a prior (as in immediately before, that day) history of being pro-actively genderist and posting about transwomen did not in any way save her. It doesn't matter how obedient a woman is, there is always some way that she is in the wrong, and will be punished for it.

Hadley is particularly wonderful. I love that these women are speaking out

I'm not generally a fan of Hadley Freeman at all, but she is right on this particular issue.

And when people can say things like ''some women have a penis'' with a straight face and expect to be taken seriously, we have well and truly entered the twilight zone. If someone has a penis, he is a man. If he is a man, he cannot be a woman. Ever. It's quite simple really.

Infertile women, women without breasts, women without uteruses, women with penises... the full spectrum of female experience.

And yet only one 'type' of woman read Hadley's heartbreaking article - which ends with her carrying the ashes of her child in a bag in her pocket while she rides a train home - and thought 'but what about me?'

Poor Lisa nothing less than self flagellation is good enough for these people.
I notice the young woman deriding her as a disgusting transphobe for talking about women's biology states in her twitter bio that she is a biological anthropology & african american studies student. It's a wonder she can cope with the course content.

''some women have a penis'' with a straight face and expect to be taken seriously

If anyone says that to me, I will be telling them to stop gaslighting me.

Why Does He Do That?: Inside the Minds of Angry and Controlling Men
By Lundy Bancroft.
Seriously. These are authoritarians verbally abusing a socially acceptable target. A woman.

Thanks for compiling this, OP.

Every time I think I’ve had my daily dose of WTF on this issue, new helpings are served.

😞